Under the white layers, a dark grit lies.

It's March, sure. But with a good amount of snow last month, surely we weren't hibernating...were we? Hibernating, no. Thankfully we have been sleeping pretty well, and eating extremely well.

Horton, Laura, and I have all had a chance or two to ski and snowboard in Telluride this winter. I was able to snowboard with Leelyn, one of our amazing volunteers from Telluride who's soon heading to Washington state to start her own CSA farm!

Afterwards, there was a soreness in the muscles for sure, but the big-mountain experience was more than worth it. This beautiful snow has also allowed me to XC-ski up to the farm a couple of times. It's something I've always wanted to do. 

Aside from the times we get to play in the stuff, we have still been busy at work. Many of you know that I have been working part-time at Natural Grocers at Vitamin Cottage in Montrose. NattyGro (as I call it) is a good fit for me in terms of "getting a job". And I have my reasons for working there. One of the biggest perks I enjoy at NattyGro is the bags of veggie scraps that I can take home to give to our goats and chickens. All the produce at NattyGro is certified organic; therefore the scraps provide excellent nutrition to our young chickens and our three currently pregnant goats.

If we weren't giving the scraps to the goats and chickens we'd contribute them to our compost piles. Though right now, it's important that the animals get the green nutrition since our pastures and chicken yards are covered in snow. This way we don't have to feed as much alfalfa hay as we would if we didn't have the veggie scraps. You'd devour fresh veggie scraps like an animal too if your main food source disappeared for 6 months out of the year!

We've also been building our compost piles and worm bins like mad! SHE'S MAD, I TELL YOU!

This pile is filled with worms that have been growing in number and size. We added a bunch of straw, bags of leaves, mycelia, Actinovate, coffee grounds, and other soil builders like greensand, crabmeal, and azomite to increase the nutrient content for the worms to process. This worm pile will be our "starter" pile that we will use to initiate other compost and worm piles this year.

 

 We've been starting all kinds of onions, eggplants, peppers, herbs, flowers, and some tomatoes in the dome where it's warm.

Leelyn and I are chatting about peppers and eggplant varieties to plant. 

Laura's re-taping up the reflective paneling in the dome, quite a project. But, she done good.

~Jak